Collecting Old Glass, English and Irish

by Sir J. H. Yoxall

Fraudulent air-spiral or cotton-spiral-stemmed glasses, not engraved or inscribed, are the fraud most often offered to a collector: in addition to the other tests mentioned, the test of the skill and quality of the spiral itself can be used in this case. The counterfeits show spirals which are meagre, irregular, tight, or the wrong colour; they do not fill up the stem, or exactly swell out to fill up the knops; in the cotton-white there are defects resembling dropped threads in a piece of linen, or missed stitches in a piece of lace. I possess one excellently twisted air-spiral forgery, a simple cable, which might deceive if the plain glass around it forming the rest of the stem were not so thick and so distinct as to suggest that the spiral was made first and the plain glass placed around it afterwards; the old spirals, air, cotton-white or coloured, were twisted at the time of and in the actual making of the whole stem. Modern spiral stems are often writhen or ridged on the surface, too; which means that the twisting of the stem has been done with less than the old amount of skill. In short, the making of spiral stems is a lost art, not recovered even by the assiduous forgers, up to the present.

If a spiral revolves upwards from right to left—the right to the left of the person looking at it—reject it; this defect was a feature of the earlier forgeries, but the proper direction of the upward twist (from left to right) is now used in these fakes.

The old cut stems are more easily imitated: with these a test is the absence of all trace of a pontil-mark. In many old cut glasses the finger feels a distinct depression, usually circular, which shows where the old pontil-mark was cut away. In some forgeries, made by moulding, not by blowing, the pontil-mark is imitated, but so grossly that it ought not to deceive.

SHAM WINE COOLERS AND FINGER BOWLS

Counterfeit eared wine coolers and beautifully cut counterfeit finger bowls are on the curio market; the usual tests should detect these. Imitation Bristol blue, and violet glass is offered, but it is not the right blue, which passes from a purple in the thick, to a sea-blue in the thin, parts when held to the light; or not the right violet, in which the same varying of colour is evident. Dozens of fraudulent white and violet finger bowls, elaborately cut, are on the market; but it is the rarest thing to find more than five or six left of any set of old finger bowls.

OLD DUTCH GLASS

Glassware of the seventeenth and eighteenth century made in the Lowlands, whether at Liège or Amsterdam, is known over here as “old Dutch.” Collectors will do wisely to study this ware, whether for the purpose of rejecting or acquiring it. Most collectors of English and Irish glass reject it at once; they rightly say that when thin it is too light-weight, bubbly, flashy, flat and short of ring, and when thick too smeary of tint and too clumsy to be first class; and often the engraving is poor and ugly. Indeed, there is something unfinished and unworkmanlike about it, compared with the craftsmanship put into English and Irish old glass; just as there is about Dutch-made furniture of William and Mary and Queen Anne date, compared with English-made furniture of the Chippendale period and style. There is something unsatisfactory in the look, shape, and proportions; it seems to lack completeness and fitness.

In the stemmed glasses, however, the Dutch air spirals are excellently done—except where they join the foot of the glass, sometimes; and the cotton-white spirals are hardly inferior to the English except in the greyness of the colour. For this reason, and also because the number of collectors of old glass increases, Dutch wine glasses on spiral stems go up in price at London auctions nowadays, and a rose glass or other pretty, well-engraved piece of Flemish or Dutch origin may be worth acquiring: there are collectors here of the Holland ware already, and there will be more as English and Irish ware of the kind becomes more difficult to find and expensive to buy. A spirit bottle, decanter, goblet, or other piece of Dutch glass that is engraved with armorials or dates, or names or legends, is not to be disdained, therefore; nor is any unusual piece that is quaintly quirked, fluted, purfled, and bossed.

CHIPPED OR BROKEN PIECES

It is sometimes worth while cheaply to acquire a chipped or even a broken piece of old glass, if it is very rare in kind, form, or purpose. Chipped feet of wine glasses can be ground again, but it is hardly worth while; when the foot is almost all gone, a metal substitute can be made for it, but that is hardly worth while. I know of a Jacobite glass with a big piece out of the engraved portion cemented in again; the price of the glass is £40 all the same; but as a rule it is not worth while to acquire chipped or broken articles of old glass.